Third Party Litigation Funding and Claim Transfer: Speakers and Panelists

The civil justice system has two goals: to resolve disputes in a just manner for parties who cannot agree to just resolutions (equity and peace); and to minimize disputes by communicating the manner in which the system will resolve them (efficiency and transparency). The purpose of this conference is to evaluate an array of actual and potential claim financing methods, particularly third party litigation funding, and the implications of transfers of interests in claims, as means for achieving these goals in commercial and individual claims.

Dispute (arbitration and litigation) claim transfer is emerging as one of the biggest and most influential trends in civil justice and is shaping how litigation/arbitration is funded in the United States and abroad. This conference brings together stakeholders to discuss this phenomenon and frame how it is debated in government, law schools and state bars across the country.

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Keynote Speaker

Lord Daniel Brennan QC

Lord Daniel Brennan QC specializes in commercial law, international business issues, public and private international law, and international arbitration. During 1999, he was Chairman of the Bar of England and Wales, the organization that represents 10,000 practicing barristers—specialist advocates and advisers in litigation and in 2000, he was voted Barrister of the Year. In May 2000, the Queen, on the recommendation of the United Kingdom Government, appointed him a life peer and member of the House of Lords.

He is a Deputy High Court Judge and Crown Court Recorder, a former member of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board, and ex-Chairman of the Personal Injury Bar Association. He also is Chairman of Juridica Capital Management Limited. He has a high profile environmental, product liability and medical negligence practice involving multi-party actions such as the insurance claims from the Paddington rail crash, the oral contraceptive litigation and, in the past, the local residents' claims arising from the Canary Wharf development scheme, the HIV/haemophiliac claims against the UK government and the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster. Most recently he has appeared in the 'designer baby' appeal in the House of Lords. He also has an extensive international litigation and advisory practice involving bi-lateral investment treaty and commercial and energy work in South America and Asia.

Lord Brennan is currently the Bar representative on the Council of the International Bar Association. He is also a member of the London Court of International Arbitration and a member of the Arbitration Foundation of South Africa, as well as a member of its Appeals Panel. South Africa. He is also on the panel of consultants to the World Bank for Latin America and South and East Asia.

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Other Speakers and Panelists

Nathan Crystal, Charleston Law School

Nathan Crystal is a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at the Charleston Law School. He taught for 32 years at the University of South Carolina School of Law until he retired in 2008. On his retirement from South Carolina he was named the Distinguished Class of 1969 Professor of Professional Responsibility and Contract Law Emeritus. He holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania (Wharton School), Emory Law School (where he was editor-in-chief of the law review), and Harvard Law School. Professor Crystal concentrates in the areas of professional responsibility and contract law. He is the author or coauthor of four books, three on legal ethics and one on contract law, including: Professional Responsibility --- Problems of Practice and the Profession (Aspen Law & Business 4th ed. 2008); An Introduction to Professional Responsibility (Aspen Law & Business 1998); Annotated South Carolina Rules of Professional Conduct (S.C. Bar 2009 ed., with Robert M. Wilcox, forthcoming in June); and Problems in Contract Law: Cases and Materials (with Charles Knapp and Harry G. Prince, 6th ed. 2007).

In addition to his books, Professor Crystal has published numerous articles in scholarly journals, including the Fordham Law Review, Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, Illinois Law Review, Kansas Law Review, Kentucky Law Journal, Mercer Law Review, Notre Dame Journal of Law Ethics and Public Policy, NYU Annual Survey of American Law, Saint Mary's Law Journal, Saint Louis Law Journal, South Carolina Law Review, Wake Forest Law Review, and Washington Law Review. He authors a bimonthly column, "Ethics Watch," for the South Carolina Lawyer. Professor Crystal lectures frequently on matters of professional ethics to national, regional, and local organizations, including the American Bar Association and the United States Justice Department. He has been a member of the South Carolina Bar Ethics Advisory Committee for more than 20 years and served as chair of the Committee from 2002-2003. Professor Crystal was associate dean of the USC Law School from 1987-1992 and director of its Center on the Legal Profession from 1991-1999. He has held visiting appointments and lectureships at Arkansas (Little Rock), Florida State, Hastings, Indiana (Indianapolis), Luiss (Rome), Scuola Superiore Santa'Anna (Pisa), Suffolk, Sydney (Parsons Visiting Scholar).

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James N. Dertouzos, RAND Corporation

James N. Dertouzos is Acting Director of the Institute for Civil Justice (ICJ). During his 27-year tenure at RAND, Dr. Dertouzos has led over 100 research projects and has served in a variety of management positions, including Associate Head of the Economics and Statistics Department, Associate Corporate Research Manager, and Resident Scholar in Economics. In addition to his research activities, he served as senior advisor to the Volcker Commission on Public Service, is a faculty member of the Pardee RAND Graduate School for Policy Studies and has taught courses at Stanford, UCLA, and the University of Southern California.

Dr. Dertouzos' research and publications cover a wide range of public policy issues including public sector management, the industrial organization of mass media, and military manpower. His ICJ research has included studies on wrongful termination in the late 1980s as well as more recent work on the legal and economic implications of electronic discovery. With support from the Sloan Foundation, he previously directed an ICJ project on the legal and economic consequences of the increasing labor market liability of employers. Dr. Dertouzos received his PhD in economics from Stanford University in 1980.

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Herbert Kritzer, University of Minnesota

Herbert (aka "Bert") Kritzer will become Professor of Law and Affiliated Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota on July 1, 2009. Since July 2007 he has been Professor of Law at William Mitchell College of Law. Prior to moving to the Twin Cities, Professor Kritzer taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1977 until 2007, becoming Emeritus Professor of Political Science and Law in May 2007. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1974) and a B.A. in Sociology from Haverford College (1969).

Professor Kritzer is the author or coauthor of five books, coeditor of a sixth book, editor of a four volume encyclopedia (Legal Systems of the World), and the author of over 100 journal articles or book chapters. He is currently coediting the Oxford Handbook of Empirical Legal Studies.

Professor Kritzer's research focuses on the empirical study of the legal profession and a variety of legal phenomena. Current projects include several studies related to scientific and expert testimony, judicial elections, television news coverage of litigation and the legal profession, the craft of legal practice, access to justice, and the defense of tort claims. His research involves a combination of quantitative and qualitative methodologies including the analysis of data derived from institutional records, systematic surveys, semi-structured interviews, and ethnographic-style observation.

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Lynn M. LoPucki, UCLA School of Law

Lynn M. LoPucki is the Security Pacific Bank Professor of Law at the UCLA Law School, and, each fall semester, the Bruce W. Nichols Visiting Professor of Law at the Harvard Law School. He teaches Secured Transactions and Empirical Analysis of Law at both schools.

Professor LoPucki has engaged in empirical research on large public company bankruptcies for the past twenty-five years and has been quoted in several hundred news articles on the topic in just the past five. His Bankruptcy Research Database provides data for much, if not most, empirical work on the topic. Professor LoPucki's book, Courting Failure: How Competition for Big Cases Is Corrupting the Bankruptcy Courts (University of Michigan Press 2005) shocked the bankruptcy world with empirical evidence regarding the effects of forum shopping and court competition. The debate over those allegations has dominated recent scholarship in the field. Professor LoPucki and his frequent coauthor, Joseph W. Doherty, are currently working on another book, Controlling Professional Fees in Corporate Bankruptcies, under contract with Oxford University Press.

Professor LoPucki uses an empirically-based systems approach for policy analysis. He has recently proposed public identities as the solution to identify theft, court system transparency as the solution to judicial bias, and an effective filing system as the solution to the deceptive nature of secured credit.

Professor LoPucki is co-author of two widely used casebooks: Secured Credit: A Systems Approach (5th edition, with Elizabeth Warren, 2006) and Commercial Transactions: A Systems Approach (with Warren, Keating, and Mann, 3rd edition, 2006) a leading practice manual: Strategies for Creditors in Bankruptcy Proceedings (with Christopher R. Mirick, 5th edition, 2007) and a popular series of bankruptcy procedure flow charts: Bankruptcy Visuals. LoPucki's Death of Liability thesis — propounded in a Yale Law Journal article in 1996 — is featured in casebooks in several fields.

Professor LoPucki received his B.A. and juris doctor from University of Michigan and an LL.M. from Harvard.

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Jonathan Molot, Georgetown University Law Center

Professor Molot writes and teaches at Georgetown University Law Center in the fields of civil procedure, complex litigation, administrative law, statutory interpretation, federal courts, corporate finance, and insurance law. His articles have appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, and The University of Chicago Law Review. Professor Molot has worked with law firms, investment funds, investment banks, and insurance companies and brokers on various structures to manage and transfer litigation risk. Before entering law teaching, Professor Molot clerked for Justice Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court and practiced law at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in New York, and at Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel in Washington, D.C. He graduated magna cum laude from Yale College and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was Articles Co-Chair of the Harvard Law Review and won the Sears Prize (awarded to two students with highest GPAs in a class of more than 500). Professor Molot was a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School in the fall of 2007 and served as a lawyer on the Obama Transition Team and Obama Treasury Department during the Fall and Winter of 2008-2009.

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Kathleen Flynn Peterson, Robins, Kaplan Miller & Ciresi LLP

Kathleen Flynn Peterson is a partner with the national law firm of Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi L.L.P. She is a Civil Trial Specialist certified by the Civil Litigation Section of the Minnesota State Bar Association. Kathleen limits her practice to medical malpractice representing individuals and families who have experienced injury or death as a result of medical negligence. Kathleen currently serves as President of the American Association for Justice. She is the 1999 recipient of ATLA's Lifetime Achievement Award. She is a member of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers, the International Society of Barristers, the American College of Trial Lawyers and the American Board of Trial Advocates, serving as President of Minnesota's ABOTA chapter in 2005. She is Past President of the Minnesota Trial Lawyers Association.

Ms. Flynn Peterson's verdicts and settlements have consistently been reported among the highest in Minnesota. She has been repeatedly named in Best Lawyers in America and Law & Leading Attorneys and was named one of the 25 Women Industry Leaders by the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal, 2006. In 2007 she was named by the National Law Journal as one of the 50 Most Influential Women Lawyers, and was named by Minnesota Lawyer as an Attorney of the Year. She received her B.A. in nursing from the College of Saint Catherine in 1976, and her law degree from William Mitchell College of Law in 1981.

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Robert T. Reville, RAND Institute for Civil Justice

Robert Reville is the Director of the RAND Institute for Civil Justice (ICJ) and the Director of the Center for Corporate Ethics and Governance (CCEG). He was appointed Director of the ICJ in October 2002, after serving as research director for three years.

As a labor economist, Dr. Reville focuses on compensation policy, and has a national reputation in workplace injury compensation policy and the impact of disability on employment. He was recently appointed to the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He also serves on the Workers' Compensation Steering Committee of the National Academy of Social Insurance. As Director of the Institute for Civil Justice, Dr. Reville leads a highly-respected research organization within RAND that provides empirical research to inform policy decision making on class actions and mass torts, jury verdicts, administration of justice, workers' compensation and other civil justice issues. As a founding Co-Director of the Center for Terrorism Risk Management Policy, Dr. Reville has built a center within RAND to address policy issues related to terrorism victims' compensation, liability, risk management, risk modeling and insurance.

Currently, Dr. Reville is leading an innovative project to create models and information products related to mass litigation. The project is a joint venture between RAND Institute for Civil Justice (ICJ) and Risk Management Solutions (RMS). The ICJ will use the resulting models and databases for public policy applications.

Dr. Reville received his Ph.D. in economics from Brown University.

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Neil Rickman, RAND Institute for Civil Justice Europe

Neil Rickman is Director of RAND Europe's newly created Institute for Civil Justice Europe and Professor of Economics at the University of Surrey.

Neil graduated from the University of Durham (BA (Hons) Econ) in 1988, before moving to McGill University (Montreal) to read for a PhD in Economics, which was completed in 1995. From 1991 to 1995 he was a Research Officer in Economics at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Oxford, and a lecturer in Economics at Pembroke College, Oxford. He moved to Surrey in 1995, and became Professor of Economics, and Head of the Department of Economics, in 2004. He is a CEPR (Public Policy) Research Affiliate and became Chair of the Royal Economic Society's Conference of Heads of University Departments of Economics (CHUDE) in January 2007. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the International Review of Law and Economics and also of the Government Economic Service's Professional Training Board.

Neil's research interests are in the regulation of service industries, especially in legal services and health care. In these areas, he has published research on medical negligence, legal aid reform, contingent fees for legal services, legal expenses insurance, litigation, medical malpractice and NHS contracts. He had advised the Ministry of Justice, the Legal Services Commission, the Law Society, the Civil Justice Council and the Department of Health on matters relating to legal policy and medical malpractice. He has also advised Ofcom on radio spectrum regulation. His work for the Civil Justice Council in 2003 (with Paul Fenn, University of Nottingham) helped establish the current regime of fixed fees for road traffic accident litigation in England and Wales. Neil was a member of the Civil Justice Council's sub-committee on Court Fees (2000-2002) and the Advisory Panel for Sir David Clementi's Review of the Regulatory Framework for Legal Services in England and Wales (2004); he was also invited to give advice to Lord Woolf's Review of Civil Procedure in England and Wales (1995). He is currently an advisor to the National Audit Office's value for money study of criminal legal aid in England and Wales.

Neil has published in the Economic Journal, the Journal of Public Economics, Economica, Oxford Economic Papers, the Journal of Health Economics, the Journal of Risk and Insurance, the Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Fiscal Studies, the British Medical Journal, the International Review of Law and Economics, the Oxford Review of Economic Policy, the Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance and the European Journal of Law and Economics. He has also authored/co-authored seven reports for the Ministry of Justice, others for the Legal Services Commission, Civil Justice Council and Department of Health, and numerous book chapters.

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Michael Schill, UCLA School of Law

Michael Schill is Dean and Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law. Dean Schill is a national expert on real estate and housing policy, deregulation, finance and discrimination. He has written or edited three books and over 40 articles on various aspects of housing, real estate and property law. He is an active member of a variety of public advisory councils, editorial boards and community organizations. Before joining the faculty of UCLA School of Law, Dean Schill was the Wilf Family Professor in Property Law at New York University School of Law and professor of urban planning at NYU's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. From 1994 to 2004, Dean Schill served as the director of the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. Prior to that, Schill was a tenured professor of law and real estate at the University of Pennsylvania. He has also been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School.

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Timothy D. Scrantom, Juridica Capital Management Limited

Timothy D. Scrantom is the President of Juridica Capital Management (US), Inc. He is an American lawyer and an English barrister-at-law (Gray's Inn) (currently non-practicing). In private practice, a significant portion of his practice centered on disputes, audits and investigations in international finance. He also acted as a strategic consultant on legal issues in complex multi-jurisdiction litigation and business migrations.

Mr. Scrantom received a juris doctor (cum laude) from the University of Georgia (1983) and an LL.M. in International Business Law from the London School of Economics (1984). In the United States, he is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia, Georgia and South Carolina. Mr. Scrantom is a barrister before the courts of the Eastern Caribbean States.

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Selvyn Seidel, Burford Advisors

Selvyn Seidel is an attorney with 40 years experience representing business entities in diverse projects in the United States and abroad. Until December 31, 2006, he was a senior partner at Latham & Watkins, a leading international law firm. At Latham, Mr. Seidel was at different times the Chairman of its International Practice, the founder and Chairman of its International Litigation and Arbitration Practice Group, and the Chairman of its New York litigation department.

He was for ten years an Adjunct Professor at New York University School of Law, where he taught courses in International and National jurisdiction and practice. He is currently an Alumnus Lecturer at Linacre College, Oxford University.

Mr. Seidel is the founder, Chairman, and CEO of Burford Advisors LLC, and its subsidiary Burford Litigation Funding. The entities consist of diverse, experienced professionals, and distinguished business and finance individuals, advising on an integrated and comprehensive basis. In the litigation finance industry, Burford Litigation Funding and members of Burford Advisors LLC are independent expert consultants to Claimants, Funders, insurance entities, and law firms. As such, they assist on a number of levels: matching Claimants with Funders, insurance entities, and law firms, as needed; independently and objectively evaluating Claims, and when possible improving the recovery value of the Claim; facilitating the approval process of Claims; coordinating with various parties and improving where possible the prosecution of and resolution of Claims; assisting in establishing Funds for special areas of litigation financing.

Mr. Seidel graduated from the University of Chicago (1964, B.A., economics), the University of California (Berkeley) law school (1967, J.D., California Law Review), and the University of Oxford (1968, Dip. Law, Linacre College).

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James E. Tyrrell Jr., Patton Boggs LLP

James E. Tyrrell, Jr. is the Managing Partner of the Greater New York/New Jersey offices of Patton Boggs, National Chair of the firm's Toxic Tort and Product Liability practice groups, and a member of its Executive Committee. Mr. Tyrrell's experience includes toxic tort, product liability, intellectual property, antitrust, and general commercial litigation.

In the area of toxic torts, Mr. Tyrrell served as chief trial counsel for a prominent agricultural company in Agent Orange litigation, national coordinating counsel for a leading research-based pharmaceutical company in the DES litigation, national counsel for the largest American-owned wine and spirits business in alcohol-related litigation, chief science counsel in litigation involving a world-leading steel manufacturer and distributor, and counsel for one of the ten largest Fortune 100 companies in silicon gel breast implant litigation. Mr. Tyrrell also serves as product liability counsel for a PCBs and chemicals corporation, a large consumer product and toy company, and numerous other manufacturers.

In the developing areas of intellectual property litigation and e-commerce, Mr. Tyrrell serves as national coordinating counsel for a technologies company, representing it on a wide range of intellectual property and trade secret cases. Mr. Tyrrell also represents numerous communications companies and other leading corporations across many industries.

After serving as an associate at a large law firm, Mr. Tyrrell became the youngest equity partner with another notable firm in Manhattan. In other law firm experience before coming to Patton Boggs, Mr. Tyrrell was a senior partner and headed one firm's largest litigation team, and he was later the Managing Partner of the New Jersey office of a highly-ranked Am Law 100 firm. Mr. Tyrrell also served as a Lieutenant in the Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps.

A member of numerous associations, Mr. Tyrrell has served on the Federal Legislation Committee and currently serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome Association of America.

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Stephen C. Yeazell, UCLA School of Law

Stephen Yeazell is the David G. Price and Dallas P. Price Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law. He has written about the history and theory of procedure and about the contemporary transformation of civil litigation, including its financing mechanisms. He teaches courses that correspond to these interests: Civil Procedure, Contemporary Civil Litigation, and International Civil Litigation. He has received the University's Distinguished Teaching Award and was the first recipient of the School of Law's Rutter Award for Excellence in Teaching. He served as chair of the UCLA Academic Senate for 2000-2001 and as Associate Dean of the School of Law from 1995 to 1998.

Professor Yeazell's books include From Medieval Group Litigation to the Modern Class Action (1987); Civil Procedure (7th ed., 2008); articles pertinent to today's symposium include Refinancing Civil Litigation, 51 De Paul Law Review 183 (2001), Getting What We Asked For, Getting What We Paid For, and Not Liking What We Got, 1 J. of Empirical Legal Studies 943 (2004), and Brown, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Silent Litigation Revolution, 57 Vanderbilt Law Review1975 (2004).

Professor Yeazell received his B.A. from Swarthmore, his M.A. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia, and his J.D. from Harvard.

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